'All Japan' World Cup team gave fans and the media much to mull over
Regardless of musical chairs with the manager job, the Japanese are basking in the afterglow of having made it to the round of 16 when few people had thought they could pull it off.
Speak Japanese like a biker punk from the future with 'Akira'
Those looking to give their Japanese a bit of biker edge could do worse than take in a screening of the classic sci-fi anime "Akira."
In Japanese, finding 'beauty' in plump sheep and toadies
Kanji with ovine roots turns up all over the place in Japanese vocabulary.
At 180,000 entries, Jim Breen's freeware Japanese dictionary is still growing
Even if they haven't visited Jim Breen's site directly, every Japanese learner will have come across his dictionary material in some form.
Why do the Japanese suck at learning English?
It's been said time and again: 日本人は英語がダメ (Nihonjin wa Eigo ga dame, The Japanese are terrible at English). In spite of the strong emphasis on 英語教育 (Eigo kyōiku, English education) instilled in a rigorous school system and the numerous 英会話学校 (Eikaiwa gakkō, English conversation schools) ...
Sexual consent in Japanese: Making it crystal clear that no means no
In a language where "no" can mean "yes" and vice versa, debate about sexual consent has had difficulty thriving.
To be iru or aru? That is the question
To be or not to be? What Hamlet did not know (and likely didn't care about too much at the time) is that Japanese ways of "being" make a categorical difference between animate and inanimate objects.
The 'Mao suit': One outfit for the people, but with many names
The English-language media recently described North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un as wearing a "Mao suit," but no one in East Asia would refer to it this way.
To know Japan, its people and its story, know its grub
Food in Japan is hardwired to emotion, personal identity and memory in a way that is often baffling to Westerners.
Whose line is it anyway? Tips for deciphering dialogue in Japanese fiction
Dialogue in Japanese fiction has its own set of rules, and if you're not paying close attention, you may have trouble understanding who is saying what to whom.
What would you pay to live in Minato Ward?
It was in 2001 when my friend, Chikako Sakamoto, paid ¥9.8 million for a six-tatami-mat apartment in Tokyo's central Minato Ward. The apartment was inside a 長期滞在者用 (chōki taizaisha-yō, long term resident's) wing of an old hotel in Roppongi, with a very low ceiling ...
OK Google, auto-fill the gaps in my Japanese
If you are stuck for what to say in Japanese, Google search — and in particular, its auto-fill function — can be your friend.
